Welcome to the forum! I am in the process of choosing new appliances myself. The more I look - the more undecided I become!

I am certain you will get some good advice here. In addition the Garden Web also has an appliance forum where much information can be found.

Teresa

Welcome, and be sure to check out the Appliances forum.

I have a Capital Culinarian range and love it. The same company also makes Culinarian cooktops. (I probably do 80% of my cooking on the stovetop, and if I were doing it all over I might consider just a cooktop and a separate wall oven.) What's nice about it is that it has powerful gas hobs (23,000 BTU), where you can do some good stir fry. (A wok ring is available for it, and I can cook with either a 14 or 16 inch wok using the wok ring.)

Their cooktops are available in 30, 36, 48 or 60 inch versions.

They also make a 'Precision' line. Those cooktops have burners of 19000 BTU, with one of them 25,000 BTU for stir frying.

Here is a link that might be useful: Culinarian cooktop

What is your budget?

dcarch

When we did a partial remodel to our kitchen I did a lot of research and really knew more about what I wanted and what the various lines offered than those that were doing the selling. I needed to fit a range top into an existing space, so that narrowed my search down. I chose a Viking range top. It's only a 4-burner but I can use large pots on all four with no problem and can easily slide pots off the burners as the areas between are level with the burners. It's easy to clean up as well. I'm very happy with it.

Thank you so much for the responses and the welcome.
To be frank I don't even know what my budget should be. We are building our 1st home and haven't figured out how much should go into the kitchen. Our plans are at the city for approval and until we get them approved, our contractor will not give us an estimate. I am just searching around as in a few wks we will be ready to do that. In my prev home which was built by someone else, I had a Viking professional series range and a separate cook top and wall oven in the main kitchen. They were Kitchen aid which I hardly used. My cooking is done in the fry kitchen to keep the smells away.
We bought Direct buy membership ( Yeah! I know that is another story but we are stuck with them anyway. I don't expect any sympathy as I don't offer myself one. One of the stupidest things I have ever done in my life), so anyway, they do not have the popular (??) brands like Viking and Wolf. Small to mid range and in the higher end they sell Capital.( No reviews in the consumer digest )I would like to make use of the discount as much as possible BUT not at the expense of quality. Looking at your posts Culinary seems to be good. I will look at the appliance forum also.

Welcome, Madhvi, from a fellow Canadian. I'm from Southwestern Ontario.

I feel your pain regarding DirectBuy. I don't have experience with them, but have seen consumer shows about how they operate. Best of luck with your search (I can't help you, I live in an apartment and have a smooth-top electric stove, which I love).

Thanks Jasdip. I am from Vancouver.
I am kind of curious about what dcarch would say about this only because someone with a straight forward no nonsense question probably knows an answer to this. It was like what my aunt would have asked me had I posted the question to her. Here it is (if you care to answer that is).
If my max building budget was $1,000,000 on a 6500 Sq Ft home how much should be invested in the kitchen ideally? May be I should start another thread or look at another forum... cause it is a valid question for me. :)

madhvi - I think you would get a lot of responses on budget from the Kitchens forum, and specifically on ranges and cooktops from the Appliances forum. If you do a search on both forums you'll see what has been posted already.which might help you. To me, both questions are very personal and answers depend on you, your lifestyle and preferences.

Cheryl

If you are in Vancouver, you may want to consider a design that is also friendly to Chinese cooking.

When you are selling your house, you may get a higher price because I understand the Chinese dominate the real estate market in Vancouver.

Obviously, it depends on neighborhood, I believe $1,000,000 is not considered an expensive house in Vancouver.

dcarch

This post was edited by dcarch on Tue, Apr 16, 13 at 13:51

The appliance forum is often focused on the higher end products. They like Capital over there. A couple months ago someone was asking about some expensive products and someone gave a real estate basic rule for percentages of housing costs. Unfortunately, I didn't retain the rule.

Thanks once again to all of you. You are right Virgil. It is not an expensive home. (We are in the suburbs which may not make a huge diff may be 10 bucks a square foot).
We paid a little over a million for the lot already. Umm!! l don't know .... looks like it will not be an easy thing to do. It is 4AM and I still can not fall asleep. I will copy and paste my comment that I posted in the building section today, There are some really nice people out here on this site helping out. Glad I joined. :)

Cross post from the Building Forum.

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For what you are planning, I would think you may need to hire an architect. I would not use the builder's architect. Your architect should be able to advice you on the various aspects of home design in your area and your particular needs.

As I mentioned on the Cooking Forum, it may be an advantage to incorporate features in your kitchen which are Chinese cooking friendly, such as a wok stove and a huge exhaust system.

This may be a strange thing, but do consider it seriously in Vancouver, again, depending on the area.

Google "Feng Shui" and get a book on this fascinating topic. This is a very important design concept for the Chinese. They will not buy a house if there are elements of the design which violate this principles of the philosophy. I saw a program on Public TV channel, there are no projects built in Hong Kong without using a Feng Shui master.

dcarch

We are glad you joined also!

Teresa

Thanks Teresa, Jadeite and chas045. There is tons of info on these forums. I started reading some of the relevant topics and Oh man! there is sooh much to know!

Thanks for the cross posts Dcarch. Funny you mentioned. The home we recently sold was to a Chinese buyer. It had a Chinese kitchen and I will definitely get one in my new home as well. I like it very much myself. I am Indian descent and however westernized we are some of our cooking still is quite Indian. I don't use many spices actually but it still leaves quite a strong smell. It's "the way" we do rather than what we put in it. I could stay away from it but my husband likes it. :)

I was actually quite curious about Feng Shui myself. My husband however discouraged me saying that with all the hassles we already have, adding another one won't be necessary. He thinks if we are told to do things certain way and then can not do them because of our construction limitations, we may end up feeling disappointed.

I am still going to look at few "doable" things. Thank You. Yes, we do have an architect who has done a preliminary drawing and we are waiting for tree permit. Our property has a lot of them and unfortunately some of them are within the building envelope and have t be taken down. Once we get that the architect will complete the drawings. We already hired a builder who has built our office space and did a great job.

I looked at a few youtube Feng Shui videos, I don't think it should add to construction cost. It has to do with property placement of elements and selection of none antagonistic colors.

If you are of Indian descent, you should do well with the construction. Indians do very well in construction in Vancouver.

And Happy New Year? :-) (Rongali Bihu)

dcarch

Oh Madhvi, the members in this Cooking Forum are very interested in Indian cooking. There has been a few threads on Indian cooking recently here.

dcarch

Oh! That is soohsweet of you Dcarch to look at those videos. I was doing the same thing and found that same thing.
Did you know we have something called "Vaasthu" in India which is like the Feng shui of China?? It is much more complicated and hard to achieve so my husband and I decided to not go there. :)

Another thing - Read this if you have time. "Individual mother tongues in India number several hundred; the 1961 census recognized 1,652 (SIL Ethnologue lists 415). According to Census of India of 2001, 30 languages are spoken by more than a million native speakers, 122 by more than 10,000"
I speak only 4 of them fluently and can some follow 4 more. Not too impressive ha?? :)

It depends on the state you live in. Umm! We are complicated people you see. :) It was getting to be too much... That's why we decided to move to Canada (only 2 official). LOl!

Thanks again.

Actually, I have looked into Vastu shastra as well, not that I am very knowledgeable about that discipline.

I do believe that our well being, physical and mental health all are effected by many elements around us.

Although I don't talk about it. I even apply some of that thinking into my style of food plating. It's about the balance of the five elements and visual proportions.

dcarch

As for cost, I find "guidelines" useless unless you're concerned about resale. Unless you're planning to sell in the next several years your kitchen will likely be outdated to a buyer anyway, so you might as well just put in what's comfortable for you, financially, aesthetically and culinarily. I wouldn't base my kitchen on resale - or anyone else's opinions - unless resale was imminent.

If you ARE planning to sell soon, I'd look at real estate listings in the area to see what's being put in comparables.

Nothing beats actually checking out cooktops. Go to a good quality appliance store and check out the cooktops. I cook indian food as well. I was all set on a gas range like Bluestar or Capital Culinarian and then when I actually checked out the cooktops, they looked to be a pain to clean. I also checked out induction cooktops based on advice from the appliance forum and that was a big revelation to me. Unlike the electric flattop cooktops, this was a cooktop which could boil water super fast but without getting the rims of the pot hot. The cooking surface never gets too hot. The cleanup is super easy. If you are frying or cooking foods that can splatter and splash, just put down some papertowels and put your pot on top. unlike gas, 90% of the energy goes to actually heating the food not heating the room. I was also able to do drawers for utensils and pots and pans under the cooktop as the clearance requirements was minimal. I will admit that I am also installing a single gas wok cooktop. I will use this for roundbottomed indian woks and for puffing phulkas and charring eggplants and papads. Anyways the main point I want to make is to personally go and actually check out the cooktops and even do a trial cooking on them. Appliance stores and distributors were able to set up appointments for me to actually cook. My bias in kitchen budget is to get topnotch appliances (shop around for best bargains and consider floor models etc.). I personally would rather have a great dishwasher and fridge than fancy european cabinetry :)

Welcome to the cooking forum Madhvi. We are almost neighbours. I'm on Vancouver Island.

Can't help you with your choice, but at least being in Vancouver you do have a lot of good high end appliance stores to choose from.

~Ann

Thanks to all of you
1) Dcarch- Yes, you made me think. I am going to discuss it with my husband although i doubt if he will be convinced. Vaasthu says u should dog a well on the northwest side before building...it will be HARD to make him go with it. LOL!
2) Foodonastump - I agree 100% No i am not going to let resale affect my decision.
3) GWlolo - Great advice. Will bk a cooking appt and consider induction & single wok burner.
4) Ann - Howdy neighbour? :)

Thanks to all of you
1) Dcarch- Yes, you made me think. I am going to discuss it with my husband although i doubt if he will be convinced. Vaasthu says u should dog a well on the northwest side before building...it will be HARD to make him go with it. LOL!
2) Foodonastump - I agree 100% No i am not going to let resale affect my decision.
3) GWlolo - Great advice. Will bk a cooking appt and consider induction & single wok burner.
4) Ann - Howdy neighbour? :)